


brevity

by caleo



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Post-Canon, Resolved Sexual Tension, Romance, someone doesn't, someone says i love you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-04 23:43:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17314016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caleo/pseuds/caleo
Summary: “Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you and the one you love simply aren't meant to be together. The trick is to know when that is, to know when it's time to fight and when it's time to part ways.”The Exile never learned the lesson. Atton, somehow, did.





	brevity

**Author's Note:**

> Shows up 15 years late with Starbucks (and I still stan this ship).

The Exile confesses her feelings at the height of passion, and it sounds like an extortion, prodding if he would say it back. He doesn’t, but his grip on her thigh grows more desperate, possessive. Her mind registers it but refuses to pass judgment on her own words: the skin hardened by the Mandalorian wars turns into a delicate shell that resonates to every touch, flooding her thoughts. Her hands feverishly roam the myriad of scars on his back and trace their rough shapes. Some, raw ones, make him groan.

His ragged breathing right by her ear leads the curving of her back. Then her toes curl and the tingling sensation wipes away any form of regret.

She mutters something, works his name seamlessly between the hungry gasps for air, and feels the barely restrained bite of his bared teeth on her shoulder.

The warmth in her stomach dissipates, and she learns, quite soon, he is not very chatty after making love. She doesn’t mind—relieved, actually; and she ends up running her fingers up and down his neck.

Her thoughts drift back to the time she, impulsively, kissed him on the cheek. Between the confusingly intense escape off the G0T0’s yacht and the boarding onto Ebon Hawk with its volatile personalities, she managed to find a moment of privacy to tug at his sleeve and brush her lips somewhere closer to his jaw. Despite the awkwardness, the memory feels like a precious trinket, one that showed her how little in control she was.   

Not before long, Atton is fast asleep. His face is mushed into a pillow—a luxury he, no doubt, is enjoying—with only one arm thrown over her waist.

She paces herself, sliding out of the bed one limb at a time. Her feet easily find the robes, and she pounces around picking up the smaller items.  Her belt, however, proves difficult to find, and she fights the dull light seeping from the outside. She finds the garment by Atton’s side of the bed, watches his chest rise and fall. His outstretched hand is close, fingers relaxed and inviting.

She exits the apartment barefoot. The sound of the magnetic lock behind her back, despite its softness, is scraping.

It is no surprise to the Exile that Telos is otherwise as dead in the night as its surface. The beeping and blinking of the informational displays, starved for attention, attracts no one. The only few presences on the streets are of those that brave them on a daily basis, completely disinterested in her lightsaber. She stalks towards the elevator to the docks, where she finally gets to take out the frustrations on the call button.

She is trapped inside, with nothing to do but wait as the metal box makes its descent. The tiny spark of vanity wins over, and she looks up to find the surveillance camera still wrecked from their recent journey up.

There is a lot of thinking to do.

She can easily turn back. Climb under the sheets, find her place at the crook of his neck, and the worst she’d get would probably be a low grumble as he shifts in his sleep.

She hates how real that feels. She hates that when her fingers touch the curves of her lips, remembering, she must tear her hand away.

There is no Jedi training for _that_.

When the doors slide open, she doesn’t even notice. The night shift on Telos is all droids and the reverberations of their systems, so with no one in the elevator but her, it takes her a good while to recognize that the path to the Ebon Hawk is now clear. At the airlock, she gets by with the bare minimum of formality: the attendant only asks if she has interest in the recently available docking fee plan. She politely rejects, and the machine inquires no further.

The rest of her gear sits in a locker there, ready for pickup. Most precious of all is the datapad with the coordinates, which should point to a planet in the Unknown Regions. They are not exact, not by a long shot, but it’s a far more appealing alternative to simply swiveling in the pilot’s chair and floating from system to system. The Unknown Regions are immense, and even with the fastest ship at her disposal, she has only so little time.

She is prepared to find out someone is trying to steal the Ebon Hawk again and speeds towards it when she finds it still in the hangar.

She is not prepared to see Atton standing at its boarding ramp.

He lets the surprise wear off before he starts talking. There is something artificial about it.

“I should take offense to this, I really should. Who exactly are you trying to game here?” his arms are crossed and he speaks in a voice that is exceptionally dry. He assesses her with meticulous precision, the face she recognizes from when he bets actual credits in a game.

Just like a child caught red-handed, she stands in silence. For that, he has little patience. Atton scoffs and marches in her direction, and the brief second she thinks he is leaving invites the nauseous feeling of fear. The mere idea of losing him the second time—after Sion, of all things—twists her guts into a dozen of knots.

He stops right in her face and sighs.

“Give me that,” Atton pries the datapad from her numb fingers, meeting no resistance, and taps her on the head with it. Lightly. Playfully. He is angry - his moves are erratic, reaching out and pulling back like a droid in need of a memory wipe—but he finally commits to pushing a lock of hair behind her ear.

Under his touch, she feels paralyzed.

“Atton—“ she begins, only for her voice to immediately lose its strength.

“I don’t want to hear it,” he fires right away and proceeds to study the datapad contents with ostentatious indifference, far longer than is needed. She merely watches him, astounded, until his eyebrows shoot up and he meets her eyes. “So you decided to follow Revan? Isn’t that exactly what Kreia wanted? I mean, not exactly, but…”

The Exile cannot explain it with anything but a feeling, a calling that bends to no reason. Ignoring it feels like something is twisting her arms whenever she merely thinks about it. Less obvious than a war. More cryptic than a sign from the Force.

Atton frowns as if hearing her thoughts.

“Kreia or not, I have to go there,” she states firmly, mindful not to sound hostile.

He takes a moment to process her answer, then nods in agreement with some inner conclusion.

She tenses up, unsure what to prepare for.

“Actually, no. _I_ have to go,” he waves the datapad in the air, sounding like he is reminding her something she has forgotten. A brief smirk of satisfaction flashes on his lips. “I pilot the ship and I have the coordinates. You can come along if you want, but I have to warn you it may get quite dangerous. You know how it is.”

At first, she just gawks at him. Then she buries her face in the palm of her hand, if only to hide the spreading grin. She feels damn close to bursting out into an all-out laughter, the flustered, choked kind, and her shoulders keep flinching.

“Don’t hold back on my account,” she hears him say, spots the fleeting softness in the glint of his eyes. The gush of guilt jumps her with unexpected vehemence.

Her lips part, and suddenly she is a lot less confused about what is going on.

“Atton, about me leaving—”

“I’m not going to talk about it if you’re not going to talk about it,” he gives her a purposeful look, tilting his head a little.

He doesn’t offer anything else and takes off, ending up on top of the boarding ramp in no time. Atton looks back at her, questioningly, and nods towards the depths of the ship.

She can take a hint.


End file.
